A Quantitative Analysis of Skill and Efficiency: Hopewell Blade Production at the Turner Workshop, Hamilton County, Ohio

Abstract

We describe and analyze blade production at a small site near the Turner Earthworks, Hamilton County, Ohio. The Turner Workshop provides perhaps the largest sample of Ohio Hopewell (ca. A.D. 50–350) blades and blade-cores recovered from a single site to date. We focus on describing the production process at Turner and comparing our results with those from other Ohio Hopewell and nonHopewell blade production sites. Special attention will be focused on rates of production errors, metric variability in final products, and the variability introduced into the production process by increases in distance-to-source and how these lines of evidence bear on the question of specialized production in middle-range societies. Our analysis reveals an industry characterized by a high frequency of errors, a high level of variability in final products, and a lack of standardization in reduction process. We therefore conclude that the Ohio Hopewell blade industry did not employ craft specialists.